


Do Not Count the Candles (But Notice the Light They Give)

by Pollydoodles



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-26 00:00:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6215449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollydoodles/pseuds/Pollydoodles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s disappeared.</p><p>It’s his birthday party, the one that Stark insisted on throwing for him, and he’s just gone. Vanished like hot breath on a mirror, there and then gone, no trace left behind. No one else, she thinks, has noticed yet. Steve will, give it another ten minutes maybe and he’ll look up from the pool table where Sam is currently kicking his ass, and he’ll realise that Bucky is nowhere to be seen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do Not Count the Candles (But Notice the Light They Give)

He’s disappeared.

It’s his birthday party, the one that Stark insisted on throwing for him, and he’s just gone. Vanished like hot breath on a mirror, there and then gone, no trace left behind. No one else, she thinks, has noticed yet. Steve will, give it another ten minutes maybe and he’ll look up from the pool table where Sam is currently kicking his ass, and he’ll realise that Bucky is nowhere to be seen. 

Darcy considers, tucked against the wall in her pretty party dress, sparkles flashing as the disco lights catch the sequins, unnoticed by the rest of the guests. By the bar, Pepper throws her head back and laughs, Banner dipping his own head shyly in response, grinning to himself as Natasha pours another glass of wine for the pair of them. 

Thor, arm wrapped firmly around Jane’s waist, nods enthusiastically along to a conversation he has no understanding about but in which he wants desperately to be involved. Jane for her part is gesturing wildly and arguing with Selvig who shakes his head at her fervently and rips a napkin out from under a glass on the coffee table to his right, pulls a ballpoint pen from his top pocket and attempts to explain to her in diagram form why he is correct and she is not. 

The music pumps steadily in the background. It pulses through her body as she leans against the wall, sending a deep hum through her bones. 

Stark is holding court, an enraptured audience hanging off his every word, just the way he likes it. Barton nudges into the small of his back and he pauses momentarily in the middle of yet another story about Iron Man to take the proffered beer bottle. He claps a hand to Barton’s back and draws him into the circle, changing his tale on the fly to one about Hawkeye, something about a grappling hook and an impossible shot. 

Barton grins. 

No one will miss her. 

She finds him, eventually, perched on a ledge on the rooftop. He sits, head down and legs dangling. The drop doesn’t seem to bother him, though they’re thousands of feet up and there’s nothing that will stop him plunging to certain death, splattered in pieces against the concrete below should he unbalances and fall. 

There’s a snap and a blaze of light and then he’s settling back and drawing on a cigarette hard before exhaling the smoke into the cool night air, the grey whispering its way around his face before disappearing into the shadows. 

“Take a seat, Lewis and quit thinkin’ so hard, it’s makin’ my head hurt.” 

She flushes, but carefully moves up alongside him and arranges herself, pulling down the hem of her dress awkwardly as she settles next to him. Despite her best efforts it’s ridden up and showing much more thigh than she’d ever have intended, but she’s sat now and can’t wriggle any further. 

“You’re missing your party.” She says, and resists the urge to look at him, his face haloed by the moonlight, and instead gazes out across the city, her breath hot and colouring the night almost as much as the smoke from his cigarette had. It’s not late yet, not really, but even if it were three in the morning New York would still be a hive of life, of movement, of people just out there living their lives. 

He laughs, a short sharp bark against the night. 

“It’s not my party.” He says, and takes another drag. 

Now she does look at him, and the glint from his metal arm is reflected in her eyes as she stares up at him. His face is framed by dark hair, still long and slightly lank. He’s not bothered whether it’s fashionable or not, and Darcy’s bitten her lip on more than one occasion to stop herself from telling him that actually it is on bang on trend right now. He’d probably hack it off with the nearest kitchen knife if he knew, and secretly she likes it. 

“It’s for your birthday,” She says. “In your honour.”

“No.” He says, and exhales a small cloud of smoke once more and rolls his head back until it’s resting on the brick wall behind him, eyes staring up at the stars above them, sprinkled across the night sky like so much scattered sugar. “It’s so Stark can be the leading man of his own picture-house. Again.” 

Darcy can’t find the words to argue with that. Stark has, surprisingly enough, many good qualities, but they’re all too often paired with selfish reasons and she’s not good enough of a liar to be able to defend the point with him. He already knows she finds Stark too much at times, and Bucky avoids the man where he can. Too much like Howard and yet not enough like him, he explained to her once, eyes blank and replaying some sepia-hued memory to himself as he spoke. 

“Steve will notice you’re not there.” She says instead, and plucks what’s left of the cigarette from his hand boldly, slipping the end between pink lips made rosier by the cold night air, and sucking quickly before handing it back in an exhale of smoke and breath. 

He allows her it, knowing she’s not a smoker but is trying to share the moment with him. He slips it back into his own mouth, capturing it with his own reddened lips, and shrugs off his jacket in one graceful movement and slings it across her bare shoulders before responding. 

“Eventually.” He mumbles around the cigarette and she shoots him a sharp look. 

She reaches forward and slips her shoes off, discarding the dark heels to one side and wriggling her toes, stretching her feet in pleasure after freeing them. Finding courage she dangled her legs over the edge, mirroring Bucky’s position, though he was relaxed and she still hesitant, mindful of the sharp drop that awaits them should they miscalculate.

“Well, Happy Birthday anyway.” She said, not looking at him but leaning forward slightly, his jacket slung across her shoulders and the edges of it brushing lightly against her sides as she moved, shifting herself and trying to find a more comfortable way to sit against the cold brickwork. 

“Is it?” He sighed and she adjusted back, settling herself against the wall and looking up at him. He hung his head and sucked the life out of the last of the cigarette before giving up and flicking the butt one-handed over the wall and into the night below them. 

“Why not?” She asked, eyes still on him. 

He huffs, breath replacing the smoke from the cigarette this time, the heat from his lungs forcing its way out of his body through his lips and into the cool atmosphere. He grins, a lazy Cheshire-cat type smile that edges its way across his mouth from one side to the other, ending in a crooked lift to one side that lets Darcy know exactly what sort of young man Bucky had been before the war and all the rest of it had taken his life in its stranglehold. 

Despite everything, despite his long list of wrong-doing and the red that bled its way from his ledger, burst from the pages and seeped over the floor, Barnes still looked like a goddamned angel. Right up until he smiled – just like that, like he was now, eyes raking over her – and the devil inside him was bared to anyone who was still brave enough to look him in the eye when he did it. 

She was afraid to admit to herself how much more attractive she found him when she saw the sinner inside smirking back at her. 

He reached down beside himself and drew back with a silvery hip-flask. He offered it to her first, crooked smile still twisting his face and she took it, lifting it to her lips and tipping back, letting the liquid burn its way around her mouth and down her throat, setting a fire the whole way down. She passes it back to him and tries not to choke, the bitter aftertaste rolling around her tongue and stealing the next breath from her lungs. 

He tips it to his own mouth and takes a long slug before answering her. 

“I’m ninety-nine years old. Or am I?” He tilts his head to one side, blue eyes boring into her, the question posed but not looking for an answer. “I’ve existed on this earth, or in some version of it orchestrated by hell itself, since 1917. So that makes me ninety-nine. My face tells you I’m thirty at most, but the brain that’s rolling around behind it, trying to keep up with this new century and all this slang and tech and god knows what else, that tells me on a daily basis that I feel like I’d rather be dead.”

He takes another drink, resting the flash against his lips and just letting the amber liquid roll into his mouth. A tiny dribble escapes and trickles its way down his chin. Despite his words, despite the harshness of the tone in which they are delivered, despite the curling feeling deep in her stomach at the things he is telling her, Darcy’s inner devil wants to reach out and catch that droplet with her tongue, drag it into her own mouth and chase it down with a taste of his lips against hers. 

She swallows hard. 

“I look at myself in the mirror every morning and I’m a contradiction in every way, Lewis.” He says bitterly, and fumbles for another cigarette, hand reaching across her, sneaking across her body and into the pocket of his jacket that’s still keeping her warm. His shoulder nearly meets her chin and she breathes deeply, breathes him in, the scent of smoke and cologne and whatever it is that’s in the flask, before he pulls back and snaps his lighter again. 

“I’m not the man Steve wants me to be.” He confesses to the night, not looking at her as he sucks thoughtfully on the new cigarette, letting it dangle from his lips. “I’m a reminder of everything he gave up when he became Captain America, and I’m a disappointment every time I can’t remember something that means a lot to him.” 

“I don’t think-“ Darcy started, and he cut across her. 

“You don’t need to think, Lewis. It’s not a discussion, it’s a statement of fact.” His tone was not harsh, as it could have been – as it probably would have been from anyone else in the same position. Instead it was matter of fact, and his fingers skated over hers briefly as he finished, so quickly she almost thought she’d imagined it, save for the remaining heat that burned into her skin. 

“I’ve seen things you couldn’t imagine.” He exhaled hard and the smoke he pushed out caught in the breeze and turned back on them both, Bucky waving a hand lazily to disperse it. He handed her back the flask and she took it gratefully, even though the alcohol inside took her breath again when she sucked it down. “Done things you shouldn’t imagine, Darcy.”

Her blue eyes turned to him as he used her first name, and the intimacy of it thrilled a bolt of electricity through her bones that she’d never admit to anyone else. 

“I didn’t ask for this.” He ground out, and ripped what was left of the cigarette from his mouth where it had been hanging, listless. He offered it to her without looking at her, and though she didn’t really want it, she took it anyway, feeding it between her lips and taking a cautious drag. The taste hit her lungs this time and she coughed. He plucked it from her then, fingers brushing lightly against her parted lips and she shivered at the touch, wanting more but saying nothing. 

He looked at her then, really looked at her. Dark hair tumbled around her shoulders, cascading over the shoulders of his jacket which hung over her petite frame. Her dress, ridden up and exposing porcelain white thighs peppered with gooseflesh from a combination of the cold brickwork she was pressed against and the chill in the air. 

His eyes raked over her and Darcy tried to control her breathing so that her breasts weren’t heaving under his gaze. 

“I didn’t ask for you to come and find me.” He said, eyebrows furrowed as he looked her up and down. 

“I wanted to.” She said, all but whispering the words, unsure if she was ready to say them to him, to voice them aloud. Too late, they had escaped her, were now out in the world and now somehow real – more real than they had been bouncing around on the inside of her head and painfully pushing against her heart. 

His hand was against her cheek, not quite caressing her but softly holding it. He breathed deeply, his face close to her own and she could feel the air disappearing as he did so, wanted to reach forward and claim him with fire and passion but stayed rigidly pressed against the wall instead. 

His eyes closed briefly then his tongue was tracing the curve of her lips, slowly dragging against the soft skin and gone all too soon. Darcy’s eyes closed and his lips were on hers, warm and wet, stealing the air from her lungs and the words from her brain. He teased her open and slipped his tongue inside her mouth, exploring her and she responded in kind as he laid a hand to her chin and tipped her up to settle against him more firmly. 

His fingers tangled in her hair and, emboldened by his actions, her own hand snuck up past his shoulders, over taught muscles and hot skin as his mouth worked against hers like he was a starving man presented with a last meal before his inevitable execution, pushing her fingers into his dark hair and tugging lightly. 

He moaned into her and his hand slipped from her face to her waist, pulling her closer towards him and she found herself pressed against his unforgiving wall of muscle that constituted his chest. Her tongue was hot against his, slipping, sliding and teasing against him as she gave herself up to the moment. A moment was all it was sure to be, before Bucky slipped back into himself and his walls came thundering back up like steel shutters, reinforcing him against the world. 

He tasted of ash and alcohol and something she couldn’t place that the more whimsical part of her whispered was called danger. He clutched at her like a drowning man grasping for a life buoy, as though his survival depended on it, and hauled her into his lap, panting against her as his lips broke from hers and he looked up at her from under lashes in a manner that ought to outlawed. 

Legs now either side of his thighs, her dress rucked up nearly to her hips and lips blushed a dark red from his attentions, Darcy felt her cheeks sink into a hot flush. He was running his hands up and down her sides, fingertips just brushing against the underside of her breasts as she leaned over him, his eyes heavy-lidded and lazy as he ran his tongue over his teeth.

“Did you come to make my birthday better, Darcy?” He said, his voice low in his throat and she bit her lip hard, tasting coppery blood against her tongue before she could find the words to answer him. 

“Do you want me to?” She placed a hand hesitantly against his chest and he covered it with one of his own, cool and hard against her flesh and blood hand, his right hand skating still across her body before wrapping itself around her waist and pulling her flush against him. 

“Always.”


End file.
